


Even If It's Never Enough

by MobiusStripper



Series: Li Britannia Stories [3]
Category: Code Geass
Genre: Angst, Between Seasons/Series, Canon Compliant, Geass, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Missing Scene, Shameless Tearjerking, Sibling Love, Sibling Relationship, Talking To Dead People
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:48:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25983889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MobiusStripper/pseuds/MobiusStripper
Summary: As she prepares to infiltrate the Geass Order, Cornelia must confront her guilt one final time.
Relationships: Cornelia li Britannia & Euphemia li Britannia
Series: Li Britannia Stories [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/216194
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Even If It's Never Enough

The sun is climbing in the sky, and Cornelia knows she must stop now. She must rest, and she must rest well because if her sources are accurate (and she does not deign at this point to entertain the idea that they are not, for her supplies are depleted, and she will never survive the return trip to continue her search), this will be her last rest. She will raise her air-light mylar tent one final time. Then, within the cool shade of its confines, she will eat the last of her provisions, drink all but the very last of her water, and sleep away the heat of one final blistering day. She will rise with the moon and walk the final stretch of two week’s journey into the heart of the Gobi Desert.  
  
Tomorrow, she will find answers. Tomorrow, she will have vengeance. Finally, tomorrow or some time not long after, she will almost certainly meet her fate and join her sister in oblivion. She is not sad. She is not afraid. She can afford to be neither. Every step she has taken this entire past year has only served to bring her closer to this moment, its promise a hair’s-breadth wedge between her and the deepest, blackest of despairs. It is the thing her mind has rallied around when she can no longer bear to think of Euphie. It is the future on which her mind affixes when remembering the past will only serve to bring upon her a heartsickness so leaden that it demands all her strength to keep herself from sinking to the very bottom of it.  
  
Cornelia’s pack falls from her shoulder, making a muffled impact with the hot sand below. She bends down beside it, unstrapping the flat disc of her shelter from its secured position on the underside and, releasing its restraints, allows it to expand into a small, mirrored dome. Sunlight reflects blindingly off of its surface, and once inside, its glare is filtered by the thin film, rendering the sun a smooth white orb hanging overhead. Cornelia unscrews the cap of her canteen and takes a careful sip of water, allowing it to bring some relief to the parched tightness in her throat. It is hardly cold, but she can nevertheless feel her body absorbing its relief, like an oasis pool forming within her. She resists the temptation to splash just the tiniest bit onto her face, to wash away the layered masks of fine dust the harsh desert winds have left there. She permits herself one more measured sip after wolfing down her final meal of beef jerky and peanut butter, but that is all. The remaining water is too precious, and she must save it for tonight.  
  
Dressing and undressing had posed something of a challenge in the early days of managing her limp, dead left arm, but by now, Cornelia has them down to an art. Having long abandoned the tribulation of buttons in favor of zippers, she is able to quickly shuck off the outer layers of her travelling clothes. Her pack makes a poor pillow, but a decent one is not worth the extra weight. It does not do to sleep too well these days, besides; even out here, so far from anything that isn’t sand or sky, there is always the risk, however slim, of pursuit. Her targets must know by now what she is planning, and there is no doubt in her mind they will be expecting her when she arrives. She never rests without a pistol within reach. The numbness of her useless arm obscures what might have otherwise been a source of discomfort to her in sleep: an armored cuff sporting a hollow compartment, which holds six tiny dart-like knives, air-light and ready to be drawn and thrown at a moment’s notice.

Sighing, Cornelia drops her head onto her makeshift pillow, running the fingers of her good hand through her bangs. They are sweat-dampened and gritty with sand. Idly, she wonders if the Geass Order’s underground base has a shower and laughs wearily at the thought. Who would have imagined she would one day fantasize about something as simple as a shower when she stood on the precipice of her own fate? Exhaustion saturates her bones as her body collects on the debt incurred by twelve hours of walking. She rolls over onto her side and finds herself face-to-face with her sister.  
  
In the frozen moment between heartbeats, she expects the sight to promptly rocket her out of the clutches of sleep into adrenaline-fueled wakefulness. She expects she will then sit stupefied for several minutes, gasping for air while her heart pounds ferociously against her ribs, fighting back the bile threatening to rise into her throat. After that, perhaps the tears will come, reducing her all over again to the sobbing, broken wreck the past year has made of her at its every caprice, forcing her to rebuild herself time after time only to shatter her again. Or perhaps she will simply lie awake for hours, too numb to get up and somehow too weary to sleep.  
  
But this time, it doesn’t happen that way. Cornelia knows that she must be dreaming, that her exhaustion must have caught up with her instantaneously, allowing her to cross so seamlessly into sleep that she never even noticed consciousness slipping away. And yet the realization does nothing to diminish the image of Euphemia curled in the small space beside her, the lace and crinoline of her skirt as white as a dove’s wings amid miles and miles of sand, grit, and dust. Her sky-blue eyes meet Cornelia’s own as she smiles almost wistfully. And she is _real,_ she is _there._ Should she wish to, Cornelia could count the freckles on her cheeks.  
  
“You weren’t at my funeral,” Euphie whispers.  
  
Cornelia feels iron bands snake around her heart and tighten. “I’m sorry,” she answers softly. “There was no time. I had to go.”

“It was beautiful,” Euphie answers, her eyes unblinking and glassy with the beginnings of tears. “I wore this dress. I wish I could have worn the one I died in, but,” - she breathes deeply, in and then out again - “there was too much blood. There were flowers, too. Pink roses. Like we used to put on Mama’s grave. I think my grave will look so pretty next to hers, don’t you?”  
  
Cornelia tries to speak, but her voice has buried itself somewhere deep inside her, and when she tries to coax it out - to find _anything_ to say - her throat pulls inward on itself, and tears burn in her eyes. Instead, she reaches out to take Euphie’s hand, and it feels soft and warm in hers. Solid, real, alive.  
  
“And before they put me into the ground,” Euphie continues, the first tear falling from the crest of her eyelid to roll over the smooth white curve of her cheek, “they all talked about how I was beautiful.” A second tear breaks away from her other eye, traversing the bridge of her nose before following in the path of the first. “How I was beautiful, and how I was young. I think it was all they could think of to say. Because I wasn’t strong, and I wasn’t smart. And in the end, I wasn’t even good.” She squeezes her eyes shut, and more tears flow from them. “All I wanted was to do good. I tried so hard to do good.”  
  
“You were good,” Cornelia says forcefully. “You _were._ Don’t ever let them tell you you weren’t good.”

“I’m sorry, Cornelia,” her sister sobs. “I’m sorry I was weak. I’m sorry I made you weak.”

“No,” Cornelia whispers, squeezing Euphie’s hand. “You didn’t make me weak, Euphie. You made me strong. You always did.” Her sister’s face blurs as hot tears distort her vision. “I’m the one that should be sorry. I abandoned you. I didn’t protect you. I didn’t listen to you. I should have”—her voice breaks—“I should have been there with you that day! I never would have let it happen. I never would have let him do what he did to you. I never would have let him _near_ you!” She is crying now, and she can’t stop. Her chest is heaving, and she can’t stop. Her body is so tired, and she can’t stop. “ _I should have been there._ ”  
  
It is something she has thought a thousand times if she has thought it once, yet the speaking of it now to this specter of her sister, with blue eyes and warm hands, brings a renewed sharpness to its edges, and it cuts into her deeply, forcefully, and relentlessly.

“But you weren’t,” says Euphie, and her voice is so hollow. So hurt. “You weren’t there. You didn’t even know what I was planning to do. You didn’t know what I knew. He was our brother, Cornelia. I knew it the minute I spoke to him. How could I not have known? How did you not know it was him?”  
  
_I don’t know, I don’t know,_ her mind races, _I don’t know how I didn’t know, how didn’t I know, I don’t know, how didn’t I know-_ _  
_ _  
_ Their brother, their brother, so obvious now in retrospect, so absurd that it could have been anyone else. Their brother turned on Britannia, their brother murdered Clovis while he pleaded for his life (and she is certain he would have cowered and snivelled and pleaded for his life), then murdered Euphie too, but not before violating her in the most monstrous way imaginable and poisoning the very memory of her.  
  
“ _I don’t know!_ ” she yells. “ _Why didn’t you tell me!?_ Why did you keep secrets from me?" _  
_ _  
_ She pauses then, breathing deeply. She knows the answer. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Euphie. Words cannot express how sorry I am. If I could change this, there is nothing in the world I would not do. I want you back here so badly, it is all I can think or feel every single moment. If I could give my life for yours, I would do it without even having to think about it.” She pauses, breathes. Her cheeks are slick with tears now, and more are still rising no matter how she wills them to stop, as if from some bottomless well of grief.

“I know I can never make this right. I missed my chance to keep you safe, and now I will live the rest of my days a wretched failure of a sister. But I believe, from the depths of my heart, that I can still save your memory. Please, Euphie. Please let me save your memory.”  
  
Euphie’s eyes no longer meet hers, instead seeming to fixate on some point between their faces. “I’m not sure sometimes,” she whispers, “that there is anything worth remembering.”  
  
“You’re wrong!” Cornelia hears her own voice, tense and crackling like lightning with urgency, with desperation. “You saved those hostages at the hotel. You put yourself in harm’s way for them. You were so brave, Euphie. You were always so brave.”

“I was stupid. You thought I was stupid. You thought I was silly and naive and reckless, and you were right. Look where it got me.”  
  
“I was wrong! And I was wrong about Kururugi. I was wrong, Euphie. I told you he didn’t care, but he was with you..at the...at the end, and I... _wasn’t._ So what did...what did _I_ know?” She buries her face in the crook of her elbow, unable to face the apparition any longer. “ _What did I know?_ ”

For several moments, she is unable to speak, but then she continues, the words as impossible to hold back as the tears, all of it overflowing like heavy black water from the deep, deep well inside her.

“And me, Euphie. You saved me. When Mother died. Mother died, and Father had nothing but contempt for us, and it felt like nobody in the whole world loved me. And then Lady Marianne showed up, and she took care of us, but she wasn’t the one who saved me. It was _you_. You saved me then. Because without you, without the hope of seeing you again, I wouldn’t have even made it that long. I wouldn’t have been able to push myself to be better, and she never would have noticed me at all. I would have been too lost. Lost like I am now.  
  
“It was _always_ you who kept me going. Because you saw something in the world that I didn’t. And I wanted to give that to you. But somewhere along the way, I lost _myself_. I let Father and all of them get into my head, and I lost sight of what made you...you. I let them make me think you needed to be different from how you were in order to survive. That you needed to stop believing in the world and become broken, like me. I thought that was what it meant to be strong. But you were the only thing in my whole world that wasn’t broken, and you made me strong. And I was a fool. I wasted your strength, and no amount of atonement can ever undo the wrong I’ve done you. I am not asking you to forgive me. I’ve given up everything, and I will give up more, and I don’t expect you to forgive me. I may give my life, and I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t want forgiveness. I can’t have forgiveness. All I want is to repay you however I can, even if it’s never enough.”

  
She squeezes the hand within her own, cherishing the illusion of its warmth. “I know you aren’t real,” she murmurs, raising her face again to meet the phantom’s gaze. “I know I will wake up soon, and you will be gone because you aren’t even here at all. But I just wish I could begin to tell you how deeply sorry I am.”

There is silence, and then the illusion of Euphie speaks again, her voice soft, childlike. “Don’t go, Nellie,” she says. “You’ll die. Please don’t go.”  
  
Cornelia squeezes her eyes shut. _It isn’t her,_ she recites to herself. _It_ _isn’t her. It isn’t her. It isn’t her._ “I have to, Euphie.” _Stop explaining yourself. It isn’t her._ And it’s so hard. It’s so hard not to give over every bit of her mind to the simulacrum and do whatever it asks of her. To believe that by doing so, she might begin the long climb out of the pit of failure she has dug by turning her back on her sister over and over

“It’s too late for me to turn back now. My provisions are gone. I will never make it back. And even if I did, if I do nothing to right the evil that was done to you, no life of mine will be worth living. I must do this. If I perish, may I perish destroying and exposing the ones responsible.” She raises her head and stares into the blue pools of her sister’s eyes one last time before pressing her own forehead softly to Euphie’s, the way she used to when they were small and the younger would cry. “And that includes myself. I need to go now, Euphie.”

“No!” Euphie screams. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me again!”

Cornelia’s heart wants to tear itself from her chest as she steels herself. _She isn’t real._ “I will never leave you. You will be in my heart as long as I live,” she says softly, giving her sister’s hand one final squeeze before releasing it. She reaches up and strokes Euphie’s hair. “I love you, baby sister. I will always love you. More than anything in the world.”

And all at once, it is dark around her, and Euphie is gone. Night has fallen. Her heart is pounding against her sternum like a fist, and every breath is a shuddering gulp that is not enough to fill her lungs. She rolls onto her side, breaths turning to heaves as she is certain for a moment that she will vomit, but nothing comes up. As her heartbeat slows, Cornelia lets her head drop back onto the lumpy pillow of her pack before pulling her knees all the way into her chest. Her good arm rests atop them, and she can feel herself shaking. Finally, she tucks her chin, burrowing her face into the hollow between her body and her knees, and weeps, wishing more than anything to disappear, until it feels like there is nothing left inside her.  
  
But even as she imagines lying here forever, allowing the sands to bury her inside the tiny shelter, locking her away forever in the darkness with the specter of her sister, a voice deep within is urging her to get up and get moving, and she obeys it. She pushes her body upright against the leaden weight that has filled the space where her heart used to be and goes about the one-armed routine of dressing before stepping out into the cool, dry desert night. She moves to collapse her shelter one last time and hitch it to her pack as has become ritual at the start of each night’s sandy trek, but she pauses and decides against it. Tonight’s walk will be the final leg of the journey. Should she arrive at her presumptive destination only to find it vacant, setting up camp through another scorching day will serve no end. Should the information she has gathered lead her to a dead end, there will be no further trail to follow, and her remaining rations will not be enough for the trip out of the desert. She will be truly adrift, with no food, no water, and a pistol full of bullets.

Instead, she turns to the rising moon, a ruddy globe kissing the crests of the dunes in the east. Cornelia walks toward it, leaving the small dome glinting in the starlight at her back. Over time, the winds will batter it with sand until the delicate exterior is scratched and scraped beyond the memory of its reflectiveness. It will be shredded and scattered across the dunes, and eventually, every last piece of it will sink beneath their surfaces and be forever lost. Cornelia will not sleep again before meeting her fate, and she wonders if this has been the last time Euphie will appear to her.

Had it only been a dream? She has dreamed of Euphie before — many, many times since losing her. Yet these dreams had never been so _lucid_ before _._ She wonders: could it have been Geass? She knows she is close to them now. She can feel it. Had someone at the Order sensed her presence nearby and crawled into her mind, as Lelouch had once crawled into Euphie’s, seizing the reins away from her to twist and manipulate her very thoughts? Did they mean to frighten her? To demoralize her? To break her before she could come any closer?

 _You fools,_ she thinks. _Your trickery has only served to strengthen my resolve._  
  
With that, Cornelia hitches her pack over her shoulder and walks into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> So I have always wanted to write a multi-chapter fic that picks up where When You Lie Howling leaves off and follows how Cornelia was able to track down the Geass Order, and pretty much everything that happens with her in between seasons 1 and 2. Because I'm lazy and terrible at complex plotlines, I never got anything comprehensive up and running. So I just decided to oneshot some of the more emotional scenes for, as stipulated in the tags, shameless tearjerking.


End file.
